I cheated on Hippo the other week.

That’s why this post is delayed…I just didn’t know if she could handle the truth.

She was gone. I was hungry…

I ate with someone else, ok?

There, I said it.

He was a man, too. And we ate at Laotian/Thai joint Green Papaya, which Hippo and I haven’t gone to together yet…-gasp!-

But! It was sooooo good!

Well, not quite. It was more like…really weird and awkward, you know…like it always is the first time…

No, not *him*. He was just whatever. I’m talking about the bittered duck I had.

Yah, bittered duck. What? Never heard of it? Well, here’s what it looks like:

Duck, all bittered up...

When I think of substantive, bitter food, I think of bitter melon and unsweetened chocolate, maybe beer or radicchio. I don’t think…Chinese herbs with a bit of duck-taste on the side! Man, this stuff was unbelievable! The first few chunks were pretty good, but then I started to feel like my organs were being soaked in bitterness – I started to feel like I tasted the emotion rather than the taste.

So this is what it’s like to cheat. Crap.

Well, at least there were other interesting things, like another instance of the water-flavored-like-Thai-iced-tea; a Vietnamese-style plate of herbs/greens that included what appeared to be green beans of some sort…odd; and some freshly-made sticky rice (by “freshly-made,” I mean the man ran across the street to a some kind of tax/accounting business and came out with magically-made sticky rice, which unfortunately didn’t taste at all like money).

My partner in culinary adultery (some reviews call them “dining partners,” but let’s be honest – eating is more sexual than that) had a boring-sounding, but palate-satisfying curry chicken noodle soup. Admire the droplets of oil sprinkled all over the soup, while I go mire in some more guilt, a whole week after the incident.

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Green Papaya Deli
207 International Blvd
Oakland, CA 94606
(510) 836-5337

“Wanna go on a date?”
“Sure, depends on what we’re eating.”
“Let’s go to Dopo.”
“Yay, it’s a date then.”

- Dialogue that may or may not have taken place on a particularly humdrum night

So we did dress up, me in heels (a phenomenon comparable to that of good toro meat) and him in a black button-down H&M shirt, and we sauntered on over to Dopo, one of a few quality Italian restaurants on this side of the Bay located just up the street from us on Piedmont Ave.  The small restaurant, next to a fabric store and across from a customer-deprived Chinese-American eatery, was humming and buzzing with late-diners and wine drinkers as people waited for tables at 9pm.  So we waited, white wine in hand, as we laid our eyes on the token eye candy at the front of the restaurant:  a shiny, brand new orange-sorbet Vespa.

“It must be brand new – look at how there are no scuffs on the well-oiled tires,” I said.
“Oh…yea, that’s right, no license plate either,” Elephant replied.

The date talk, after years of practice, began slowly but surely.

Fortunately, the food really warmed up these seasoned interlocutors.  After getting a seat at a very cozy window-front corner, we asked for Acme bread and wonderful house-made ciccioli — which is, basically, spreadable pork and lard with the consistency of very soft butter.  It was an addictive combination, a guilty pleasure of sourdough, perfect bread crusts and indulgent fat, almost spam-like.  We had seconds.

Elephant and I couldn’t decide on what to order.  We dreamed about ordering “for 2″ platters of the salume, the antipasti and the verdure – there were Petrale Sole with mint, Arancini with goat cheese, lobster sausage, little gem salads, coppa, just to name a few – but we tried their pasta dishes instead.  I had the lasagna napoletana:  very crispy on top, it was surrounded by a rich flood of its filling of tomatoes and some sausage meat.  The soft, melting pasta sheets looked as if they were either with spinach or squid ink (low lighting makes one wonder) and they tasted almost like baked eggplant.  I enjoyed the dish but didn’t find enough of a bite or kick in it – perhaps a sign of overdone cooking or a lack of textural elements like squash and cheese – but I hesitate to hate, as it was a homey dish and I enjoyed its no-nonsense presentation.

Elephant got the hipper dish, in my opinion:  a ricotta gnocchi with pork and lemon honey.  The gnocchi was superbly done – baby soft and tender, carrying the tang of ricotta but not its flakiness – and the creamy sauce had a pleasant hint of sweetness that really complemented the flavor profile of the dish.  Being indulgent gourmands, we swiped up the leftover sauce with Acme bread; that was almost worthy of another blog entry, but not quite!

The restaurant has quieted down now as diners around us began to leave.  We looked at the dessert menu.  Melon sorbetto?  Lemon Zeppetto? Emiliano cheese?  We couldn’t turn back now.  We settled on sharing an espresso panna cotta, topped with well-whipped cream.  Served in a ramekin instead of being popped out of it onto a plate, the texture was more pudding/custard than panna cotta (a slight disappointment) — until I hit the bottom of the ramekin and saw the gelatinized layer of ground espresso.  Reassured, I enjoyed this luscious treat, a concoction of milk and coffee that put a sweet note at the end of a satisfying meal (and, dare I say, date).

“I’ll miss eating with you,” I said.
“I’ll miss you too, Hippo,” he replied.

And on that note, I will jet off to Asia and bring back more yummy food notes when I return!

Happy Eating, everyone.

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I’m going to cheat a little. Since I read Hippo’s entry ahead of time, and since it’s way better than anything I could write about Italian spam butter…I’ll steer clear of food description and, being the good academic I purport to and sometimes just pretend to be, I’ll talk a bit *about* food description. Yes, that means I’ll describe food description…which is like, so over your head. Besides, Hippo and I fought over how I’m so demanding of her about this blog and I act as if I care more about it, so I just want to make sure that I come off as a hypocrite by not writing as much as her, so that she can say, “I told you so.” See? That’s love.

Actually, I really just want to point out that I don’t get Italian food. This subject was part of what Hippo calls our “date conversation.” She must be a pretty special lady to count this as date conversation, but hey…I sure ain’t complaining.

Anyway, here’s my super deep reason for not “getting” Italian food: I can’t remember all the names. Seriously. I don’t know what the deal is! I mean, despite having an inability to learn languages better than, say, your average amoeba, I can at least remember escargot and coq au vin and boeuf bourguignon, but I can’t remember…you know…the Italian ones.

So I told Hippo that this must be because the Italian food I’ve had isn’t meat-forward. And I must at least unconsciously think that a cuisine that isn’t meat-forward isn’t a cuisine that’s worth remembering! I think that must explain the difference between easier-to-remember French stuff and harder-to-remember Italian stuff – it’s hard for me to forget a big slab of wine-drenched chicken in front of me, but it’s easy for me to forget what kind of gnocci I had, and what the gnocci was dressed with and what it was mixed with – honestly, I don’t remember any of it, except that it was pretty good.

What is this stuff, anyway?

It doesn’t help that there are 20 million kinds of pastas. This is definitely a Hippo Tofu and Noodle Monster kind of cuisine, and less of a “Would you like meat with that salad?” Elephant kind of cuisine.

This is terrible!

What was even in Hippo’s lasagne? Is “lasagne” even spelled that way? No way. What color was it?!

And what about this white wine I had? I think it was from the Piemonte region. Wait, is that how you spell that? Wait, was it from there? Wait, what year was it? God, I have no clue!

Alas, I do remember the orange Vespa in front of the resto. It didn’t have a license plate…

Sigh.

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Dopo
Neighborhoods: North Oakland, Piedmont Ave
4293 Piedmont Ave
Oakland, CA 94611
(510) 652-3676

After the non-success of Digs, I suggested to Hippo that we go down-home, and she suggested that we go to Ao Sen, a Vietnamese pho joint back in my old ‘hood, when I was still living and eating alone.

Reflecting on our visit brings a flood of memories – of days alone gorging on Church’s chicken, fishing for edible boxed goods at Albertson’s, dishing out ATM fees at the local non-Citibank ATM and watching movies alone, beer in hand, at the Parkway, after a day’s work at the almost always, almost all black (and no doubt almost always struggling) local coffee shop. None of this was on my mind, though, as we parked along the curb across the street from the neighborhood’s very own rent-a-Segway-in-Oakland business mistake, housed next to our final destination: the noodle resto we were most fond of in hidden Little Vietnam near Lake Merritt.

The noodle shop was home to an all-Vietnamese lunch crowd, and what was perhaps a multiple-species fly infestation.

No worries. Pho tastes better with protein, traditionally of the raw or cooked beef variety, but hey…maybe a little fly is the secret that makes Ao Sen at least among the top three pho places in the area.

Let me editorialize a bit here. I have no idea what goes into making proper pho broth, but I do know one thing: it’s the broth, stupid. It’s not the Niman Ranch steak you throw into the broth because you and your diners -cough…at Noodle Theory…cough- can afford it.

A steaming bowl of tripe, steak, brisket and noodles.

Anyway, I don’t remember much except a wave of nostalgia hit me as I drank that very first sip of that rich beef flank, beef brisket, beef tendon, beef tripe-infused beef broth (oh yah, there’s the seasoning too…). “Man, we sure haven’t had this in a while,” was I all I could say to Hippo, recalling the other night’s Whatever F-ing Ranch flank steak.

Of course, after the first sip – you know, to respect the actual flavor of the thing – I go to town: Hoisin, fish sauce, Siracha, two more kinds of chili sauce, jalapeno, bean sprouts, some Viet herb (”ngo gai”), basil, basil, basil, lime. Hey, whatever about purity, man. This is like a pho buffet after a night full of drunken haute-dining tomfoolery. Besides, the flies sharing my meal can’t taste subtlety.

4.2 seconds later, I’m done. Oops, I guess it tasted good.

I then proceeded to spend the next 4.2 hours just watching Hippo eat her own dish. I don’t recommend such a thing in such a place – it’s just enough time to count the flies, and remind yourself of just exactly what kind of plastic cafeteria chair-like thing you’re sitting on. Take your time just eating.

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Ao Sen – another one of our “old favorites” – never fails to disappoint. We visited the other day for lunch from feeling nostalgic for the old hood, and they delivered: authentic Vietnamese food served in an environment as close to the real thing without going to SJ, LA, or Hanoi. The flies waiting for their next bite, the old parquet floor, the servers speaking only in Vietnamese, and the grease on the tables — everything was replicated with utmost dedication and detail. Although I’ve never visited Vietnam, I still felt that Ao Sen evoked a feeling like “home” – memories of the street eateries, the quick, cheap, and delicious food, and the hustle and bustle of urban Asia.

But the food, the food! Indeed, the food is what we came here for. Elephant ordered his usual pho, an ensemble of beef and onions in a rich, long-brewed broth served with thin flat rice noodles. Pair that with a generous plate of bean sprouts, Vietnamese basil (with the purple stems), jalapeno slices, and sprigs of parsley, and you’ve got a whole range of flavors to soak into. The broth was good as usual: I could still savor the taste in my head. Though I did chastise Elephant slightly for “contaminating the integrity of the broth – it’s the culmination of a chef’s work,” I said. Hmm. I guess he just isn’t as much of a purist as I am.

I had one of my favorites — the Hanoi style bun (pronounced “mbung”), round rice vermicelli served separately from a bowl of vinegar broth, grilled meats (steak and pork/seafood patty), pickled vegetables (carrots and lovely, breath-of-fresh-air thin slices of jicama and chayote), and fresh, fresh herbal greens (iceberg lettuce, Thai basil with green stems, big leafy mint leaves).

I’ve always had a very soft spot for bun (one of many noodle categories I crave) ever since I had it in a Maxims-chain version of a Vietnamese haute-cuisine restaurant when I lived in Hong Kong as a child – ironic, but true. There’s something to say about food fancies developed at a young age: it stays with you, and somehow everything you taste afterwards will be compared back to your first cuisine-discovery experience. And good bun is so hard to come by in the States, even in high-density Vietnamese restaurant areas like San Jose or Atlanta.

So when I first encountered Ao Sen’s version, I knew it was special — at least until I find something better. There’s something about freshly made bun – that almost sticky but never pasty balance of starch, flour and water, coupled with a perfectly-seasoned vinegar broth, that really hits the spot. Hanoi-style bun is an exciting, hands-on dish that really engages the diner to create their own meal: you can dip your ingredients in the broth one by one to enjoy them separately; you can do a simple wrap, like a huge mint leaf with a chunk of the pork patty and some basil, and the taste will surely remind you of a good shiso leaf-kalbi combo at any high-end Korean BBQ restaurant. Or, you can make a wrap with some meat, some chayote slices, a bit of the bun, lots of herbs, and dip it in the broth to make a tantalizing bite – I’d even go as far to say that it tastes better than your typical chubby Mission-style burritos, in most cases!

Bun, all mixed up!

For the more adventurous diners among you — especially anyone who can appreciate sweet-and-salty food, as we don’t get enough respect in the culinary world — try another one of my favorites, a dish (almost) never found anywhere in the Bay Area: a bun served with chewy, crispy julienned pork skin, leafy herbs, and rich coconut milk. The combination, while it sounds strange, is surprisingly tasty and refreshing — almost like having Taiwanese shaved ice and Chiyashi Chuka (Japanese cold noodles served in summertime) together – in the best way imaginable. It’s perfect for your tropical-weather craving appetites when you crave something fatty, smooth, but refreshing all at the same time.

I rest my case. Come taste Ao Sen’s Vietnamese fare for yourself.

P.S. In the meantime, if you are interested in how bun is made for real, please visit this article from EatingAsia, a traveling food blog that lives out my dream to eat, live, and visit Southeast Asia. One of the most respected food blogs around, EatingAsia combines well-written and thoughtful food/social journalism with delectable, cine-verite photographs about the people, places, and events surrounding the world of food in the region. I’ve been a fan of this blog for many years, and I hope you’ll like it too!

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Pho Ao Sen
200 International Blvd.
Oakland, CA 94606
(510) 839-6821
Hours: Mon-Sun 8:00 a.m.-7:00 p.m.

Blue Elephant and I decided to take the plunge – finally – for a Monday prix fixe dinner at Digs Bistro, a small restaurant on Dwight and Sacramento in Berkeley.

We’ve heard much about this place as it was formerly known to be one of the hippest underground dining experiences in Oakland, run by chefs who would serve delicious meals to selected friends and diners.

I wish that I was privy to Digs’ former glory days.

While it is interesting to see the evolution of underground dining into a real restaurant locale, I am not yet convinced of its results. Besides, Digs has replaced one of a few darling mini restos in Berkeley, the French-inspired Olivia Eats. I’ve been hesitant to return to the renovated restaurant for over a year now. But today, I had to confront mental comparisons of this new restaurant with its predecessor. The result was not as pretty as I would have hoped.

Before heading out of the house, we checked out their sample menus online. The choices – a sampling of major meats, Berkeley Bowl-esque vegetables, and some standard desserts – were quite conservative, ie. we weren’t blown away. “Are we setting ourselves up for disappointment?” we wondered.

Well, as we approached the wooden glass-paned door to Digs we saw a hand-written 3-course menu for the night. We looked at each other and realized that we didn’t have a choice in the matter, as we will be served the chef’s choices for tonight.

Settling down onto our seats, I noticed some remnants of Olivia – the French cursive writing on a chalkboard, the tiny restroom, the short zinc bar. I was glad that they knocked down the wall and made the space much more open. Of course, we can’t miss the Modigliani-inspired art all around us: women’s faces painted or assembled with found objects, done with a cubist touch.

The bread and whipped butter arrived to our delight – we had seconds. The sourdough has a chewy crust and a tangy taste in its meat, and the butter was fresh and mild. Not bad!

Then came the Salad with walnuts and goat cheese with mustard dressing. While the greens (some baby frisee, spinach, and radicchio) were very fresh — in fact, all the ingredients throughout dinner tasted fresh — my dish didn’t come with enough dressing. It tasted quite bland as the walnut-and-goat-cheese combo was a tired formula, until I had a second bite and was inundated with the taste of coarse sea salt. Thereafter every bite was as salty and umami as stir-fried chinese Ong Choy. It was quite weird, and I couldn’t figure out whether that was intentional. Perhaps some fresh ground pepper or mustard seeds may do the fresh greens some justice?

Next was the Hangar steak with Gordo Rancho Beans, soaked spinach, and piperade. Done medium rare, the steak paired nicely with the well-seasoned piperade. The spinach was merely poached and was flavorless; the beans reminded one of better days at campsites. Altogether, the dish was a hearty meal one may have at home with friends, or maybe at a chain gourmet restaurant a la Ruby Chris Steak House. I hesitate to comment further: everything tasted fine, and perhaps it was our hopes that let us down.

The saving grace was the fruit tart – nothing over-seasoned or saccharine, it tasted of fresh berries, good butter, and white flour, sprinkled with powdered sugar. The hand-whipped Chantilly was a nice touch and was tactfully draped along one edge of the tart. The crust was almost like shortbread and I craved to finish it with some raspberries!

Blue Elephant shall elaborate, I suppose, on our disappointment. But Digs Bistro’s efforts are nonetheless commendable, for their use of fresh ingredients and no-nonsense attitude to restaurant cooking. Perhaps it’s not our cup of tea, but local businesses who have Digs’ mindset are valuable, and worthy of patronage, nonetheless.

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I will indeed elaborate! There’s a certain kind of restaurant at a certain kind of price point that inspires me to make sure I’m not being ripped off.

Dig’s Bistro is one of those restaurants, as far as I can tell from taking quick peeks at its menu for months and having finally tried the third-Monday-of-the-month $25 three-course prix fixe.

Unfortunately, as I tried hard to find the supposed “mustard vinaigrette” through the mountain of salt Dig’s apparently piled onto our mixed green salad starter, the verdict was immediately that I was definitely being ripped off. After some reassurance from Hippo that I was being too harsh, I’m convinced now that, okay fine, it would cost more for me to make such a salad (though the salt is free – it’s on my shelf), along with the relatively high-quality hanger steak entree.

So after some thought, I’ve decided that it’s not so much that I was getting ripped off as it is that this kind of restaurant – perhaps exactly because of its price point – needs to, or just inevitably does, aspire to present a certain kind of food. The food cannot just taste decent. In fact, in some sense the food cannot just taste good. I can’t admire this food just for its being homey, oily curry from a Thai momma’s kitchen. It has to taste unique – at the least it has to have some semblance of that. I want, in other words, not to “be able to make it at home,” if you know what I mean (I mean what you might mean if you say, “I can do that,” in front of certain works of art; most of the time you’re being facetious, but sometimes…sometimes you really mean to be making a criticism).

In any case, our meal at Dig’s just didn’t cut it, I think. At first we weren’t sure if the salad was meant to be so salty, but upon re-reading the menu – “mixed greens with toasted walnuts and mustard vinaigrette” – I think it’s pretty clear it wasn’t. Anyway, even if it was, it didn’t work.

The very first thing I noted about the hanger steak dish that came next was the fact that it was, as far as I could tell, done more medium than the requested medium rare. Some of Hippo’s meat looked more rare than medium rare, so you do the math.

Aside from that, the entree was, like I said, decent – even pretty good.

But we was supposed to be eating “soaked spinach piperade” with the steak. That seems to me to suggest that there’s some spinach *take* on piperade. What I received was (bland) soaked spinach placed next to piperade (the sweet peppers of which were admittedly pretty good). This was all, again, placed next to a pile of beans. Oh, sorry: “Rancho Gordo beans.”

Perhaps one of the criteria for the “uniqueness” I mentioned earlier involves what I would typically consider snobby consideration of the so-called “presentation” of food. In this case, it looked like we were served several ice-cream-scooped portions on a cafeteria line lunch tray.

The saving grace for the meal was the fruit tart dessert asymmetrically topped with Chantilly cream, which was nicely crumbly (until the very end, where it was too hard), and just the right level of heft.

As much as I wanted to like its respectable underground restaurant (from-Oakland!) origins, I must say that I would be reluctant to go back. Maybe it was because this was supposed to be their “deal” of a meal, but if an underground-turned-legit restaurant doesn’t want to provide me with a fantastic meal for a bargain, I’m not so sure it’s really legit.

Just to note, all was not lost on this meal. While writing about it, I discovered from Wikipedia that people consider the hanger steak – the cut of meat hanging from the diaphragm of the steer – more flavorful from the outer skirt steak because of its proximity to the kidneys, which allegedly allows it to preserve the aroma of kidney. How cool is that?!

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Digs Bistro
1453 Dwight Way
(between Edwards St & Sacramento St)
Berkeley, CA 94702
(510) 548-2322
Hours:
Mon, Wed-Thu 5:30 p.m.-9:00 p.m.
Fri-Sat 5:30 p.m.-9:30 p.m.
Sun 5:30 p.m.-9:00 p.m.

So your girlfriend tells you you have to go to some tiny Thai restaurant in East Oakland – you know…over there…in real Oakland (well, minus the whole Mills college thing) – and you’ll have to – get this – call them to be let in…”for security reasons.” A real hole in the wall, right?

Wrong!

A delightfully charming, deliciously cheap, tolerably tasty mom-and-pop Thai joint with friendly service, kitschy decor and loyal neighborhoodies! Score!

It’s true you have to knock or call to get in the place, but while you wait for the husband to addle on over to unlock the door for you (actually, he poked his head out while we were taking pictures outside and invited us in with a toothy smile), you can admire the curious, almost gaudy island paradise facade jutting out of the busy Oakland street like some sort of out-of-place food oasis.

The dining room is fronted by a hallway brimming with foliage and a miniature water fountain, and is itself decked out in “authentic” Thai decor sprinkled with some wood ducks, plastic flowers, paintings of white people, and a turn-of-the-century phone.

We sat our butts down in a cozy booth, got comfortable, and immediately realized we didn’t have enough cash in a cash only place. Damn.

After careful budgeting and the help of a $7.55 specials and $2.50 “barbarian soup,” we ordered anyway. She got the panang curry custom-made with mahi mahi (instead of salmon, as posted on their chalkboard) with her soup; I got the stuffed calamari with peanut curry. We both made sure to try the sticky rice, which turned out to be pretty good (though I have to say – I still don’t really “get” sticky rice – my idea of good sticky rice is still the Japanese kind).

Sticky, sticky rice!

The soup was pungent, filled to the brim with herbs, of which lemongrass was dominant, and moderately spicy – pretty standard Thai, I think. The tofu was…I dunno…hogged by Tofu Monster over there.

First came the mahi mahi, which was actually rather hard/chewy and not that fresh. This was unfortunate, especially since the panang curry was quite good. The peanut sauce on the calamari was also quite good. Both were homey and thick, especially the peanut, and neither displayed a fear of oil, which I appreciated in this context.

The calamari was stuffed with some assortment of somewhat boring vegetables and topped with vermicelli smothered in the peanut sauce. As expected, the vermicelli took the cake and the calamari was a loser – again somewhat chewy.

Perhaps weirdest of all in the meal was the seemingly Thai iced tea flavored water. Depending on how paranoid you are, this may be because they actually put Thai iced tea flavoring in the water, or because they simply didn’t wash the glasses properly, or perhaps because they melted ice cubes from leftover Thai iced tea and served it to us awesome-style…

Most importantly, I managed to get my little Hippo back on my 550cc motorcycle at night all the way back home, safe in fake Oakland, where we’re now figuring out how next to contribute to driving black people out of their neighborhoods.

All in all, that was definitely my idea of a nice evening out.

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A lush tropical garden. Sandalwood-lined walls. Deep plush booth seats. Dim dusty lighting. Jazz of the 1960s.

Elephant must be taking me on a date.

Well, he is one special pachyderm, or I wouldn’t be dating one out of my own genus.

Only that this romantic locale also has special security measures, wooden block paintings of Mexican farmers, a huge three-dimensional kite of a bat (yes, a black bat with fangs), and pipa renditions of old Chinese songs.

This is Old Weang Ping Village, a Thai restaurant located in a stretch of sketchy East Oakland. Just a stone’s throw (and a hop) from Mills College, between dumpy-looking bungalow houses and fried fish burger joints, Old Weang Ping is an old house converted into a truly memorable locale. We found ourselves fascinated in the greenery-draped house: indeed, the Yelpers were correct about the super-lush tropical plants and Thai-styled wooden signs in front. But lo, there were figures looming around on the streets, so we were eager to escape to Phuket, or Bangkok, or just a world away from East Oakland.

After ringing the bell, the kindly owner, a mustachioed Thai gentleman, welcomed us into the restaurant. We stepped into an awesome kitsch world of random figurines, flyers for bamboo picket fences, fake flowers and real palm trees. The main dining room continued this musky atmosphere, with Thai Buddhist images and idols along with wilted plastic flowers, rainbow-colored wind chimes, dusty shelves and greasy, plastic-wrapped tables. The daily specials, written in pastel chalk, hang alongside an old phone nearby encased in a Thai-structured shrine.

Barbarian soup. What a name for my first course! It was a clear soup brewed in galangal, lemongrass, and chilies, topped with julienned bamboo shoots, mushrooms, and parsley. The mini fried-tofu cubes were tantalizing. The taste was sour, spicy, sweet: just as I expect a Thai-styled soup would be without being Tom Yum. As much as I enjoyed the tofu cubes (I can never have enough tofu cubes) and the spicy broth, this soup didn’t feel special to me. I had to agree with its eponymous attribution, as it was a kind of soup that someone in haste could whip up without need for extreme attention and care. Perhaps the chefs are going for home-style cooking, which is another type of experience in itself. I was curious to see what came next.

I had Mahi-Mahi served in a Penang-style curry with various vegetables. The curry is quite fabulous: saucy and not watery, it had the taste of real coconut milk and carried a nutty, sweet flavor. The curry was more oily than usual, and I took that as a positive trait: someone cooked it the way it would be done on the streets, or at home. Unfortunately, the fish was ostensibly pre-frozen, and did not taste fresh at all.

Mahi Mahi Penang curry

;

Elephant’s stuffed calamari dish was interesting. What caught my eye first was the abundance of bean thread vermicelli that was mixed with the chunky curry on top of the stuffed calamari. It had the color of Ants on a Tree vermicelli, which was exciting to me. (Besides being a tofu monster, I am also a great appreciator of noodles of all kinds. You shall see.) As I took a bite, I found the vermicelli very flavorful – the curry was very strong, like peanut butter – but the noodles were a bit overcooked. No matter, as they were great with the sticky rice.

We were stuffed in the end. The sticky rice did us in, as did the very strong peanut curry (which reminded me of Lam Toro’s West African dish). The Mamma Chef came out and was pleasantly surprised that we have cleared our plates. “Do you guys have enough food?” she asked. “Yes, we are very full! Thank you,” I said, rubbing my tummy.

Old Weang Ping Village – we are indeed transported into another world.

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Old Weang Ping Thai Village
6217 MacArthur Blvd.
Oakland, CA 94605
(510) 430-8771
Hours: Tue-Sun 5:00 p.m.-9:00 p.m.

It is perhaps not by mere coincidence that our restaurant pick for our second week of blogging is…Korean…again.  We live in an area endowed with a high density of Korean restaurants — mostly mid-level in service, specialty and food quality, but satisfactory nonetheless, from quickly-tossed noodles to slow-cooked black goat stews.  If you are looking for decent Korean food (and actually a handful of choices to worry your foodie head about within a 5-mile radius) north of L.A. — or even just north of Santa Clara / Cupertino — the Korean food in Oakland is most likely your best bet.

Tonight, we had our first meal ever at Ohgane BBQ, one of the higher-end Korean restaurants around here.  Higher end, perhaps, only because of the gated parking lot with security guard, and the slightly inflated prices (”Slightly” is putting it mildly, as Elephant will be sure to clarify).

On the outside (and the front end of the restaurant), it seems to be a full-service “experience Korean cuisine” type of restaurant a la Chosun BBQ, with beautiful Hanbok-clad ladies — perhaps I was expecting waaay too much; I just have to go to L.A. for that.  It turns out that the back end of the restaurant, the only part open to small-party diners, is just like a regular Kalbi joint – built-in charcoal receptacles, the exciting smell of marinated meat being grilled, drone-like servers, a wide-screen TV blaring with a football game.

The choice for Ohgane was somewhat pre-meditated.  I have been craving for really good Bibim Naeng Myun for over a week – the hot weather really evokes the need for iced buckwheat vermicelli with tangy vinegar and spicy daikon.  It’s just one of many things built into years of eating it homemade at my best friend’s house, and have much to do with my old obsession with Surig Essig Essenz Concentrated Vinegar http://www.surig.de/ (this was a major culinary revelation for me as a teenager –  German vinegar in Korean cuisine — who would have thought?).

It turns out that Ohgane’s version really hits the spot – we had a half order of it with our Kalbi and Bulgogi and it was the perfect antidote to these smoky meats.  Their hot pepper paste tasted freshly ground and mixed, and the noodles were really nice – thinner than somen, they had a surprisingly great mouth feel, and didn’t melt into the bowl nor our mouths.  The half slice of boiled egg, brisket, and daikon slices were all nice complements, but the icy broth and the noodles were the true stars.

The meats were, alas, conclusively disappointing, given our expectations to its price point and all the 4-star Yelp reviews they’ve received.  Although meaty and fresh, the thick slices of Kalbi didn’t have that extra kick of tenderness and juiciness that have made many diners swoon over at homey joints such as Koryo or Samwon.  The Bulgogi was even worse — a much more lamentable technical failure in my opinion:  the thinly-sliced beef should have been marinated just right without losing their flesh colors.

The service was pretty efficient but it turned hit-or-miss as the dinner neared its end.  We didn’t get a very warm reception, and had to wait quite a while for the check and the Shik Hye to come.  But I shall end on a high note:  Ohgane BBQ has some of the more decent and most variety of Banchan around Oakland.  From stewed Kabocha chunks to julienned acorn jelly, to egg-white seaweed rolls to baby bok choy kimchi, there was a full set of 17 different petite treats — savory, sweet, hot, and sour — and each dish afforded more than 3 bites on average.  That, along with the more affordable Korean lunch buffet offered, may someday bring us back to Ohgane.

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There are generally two negative aspects of gorging oneself on Korean BBQ: (1) you reek of smoke and garlic by the time you’re done, and (2) it’s pricy for something so homey. Since (a) Ohgane was really pricey compared to other K-bbq joints in K-town Oaktown and (b) Ohgane is highly rated on yelp <link>, I had very high expectations for this place.

It had to be better than both Koryo and Sam Wong, and have something more interesting than the kalbi jim at Jong Ga House. Paying a premium had to be worth it.

Sigh. I’m not much of a romantic, so I’m just gonna come right out and say it: in food, as in love and movies, you shouldn’t ever get your expectations too high.

I’ll let Hippo tell you all the good stuff – she’s generally better than me at being a halfway decent human being.

Ok no. Nevermind. I’ll tell you the good stuff, since I can quickly count them on three fingers:

(A) kabocha pan chan
(B) the 64″ rims wrapped in .5″ tires on the SUV parked outside
(C) Hippo loving her noodles

Great! Onto the bad stuff!

(i) After haggling (yes…haggling! We tried first to order just one plate of meat, then we tried to order two plates of meat, one of which wasn’t grillable on the table – we were refused twice), we finally received our $60 worth of meat. The plates were gargantuan right?! Wrong! TINY.

(ii) No worries, we got more banchan than other joints around the area. That must make up for the portion size of the meat, right? Maybe the banchan is delicious! Wrong again!

(iii) I read that the glazed potato ban chan was good – “crispy and crunchy on the outside,” one reviewer put it. Well she must have gotten a different batch than we did. Ours was rubbery. Hippo reminded me that it’s never exactly “crunchy.” “So? This is rubbery-er than the other places,” I told her.

(iv) Absolutely amazing homemade kimchi – that must be the secret to this four-star restaurant, right? Wrong.

(v) Ok, they can’t screw up my little anchovies right? Oh wait, yes they can. Soft. It’s not supposed to be soft.

(vi) What’s this fancy egg custard-looking thing? Looks good! Oh wait, wait…no; it has no flavor. Next.

(vii) Is the shiso/kkaennip supposed to be witheringly wilted?

(viii) This might have made us nostalgic for some better Korean meals we had in LA, but on the flip side, it also made me feel: gee, can’t we do this Oakland style, or if you’re going to copy the factory-style K-bbq LA thing, can you do it right? Did you know that $15 could get you pounds of meat in K-town?

(ix) I know, I know. You must be thinking, “Quit being an ass – the meat must have TASTED good right?” True, if the meat had blown me away, all of this would have taken a back seat. As my good friend once said while very drunk, “Meat. Meat. Meat. Meat. Meat.” Sorry to disappoint, but the bulgogi was not that flavorful or that tender, and the galbi was only okay.

(x) Just to make it an even ten: you know how sometimes when the meat ain’t so great, it’s still okay if you can dunk it in something relatively great? Well, the fermented bean sauce that typically comes with K-bbq was high on fermentation, but low on flavor. So even that couldn’t be a saving grace.

Sigh, ok I’m done. Anyway, all that criticism and I’m still stuffed and rolling around like a big, round BBQ ball, and actually quite happy, since, ironically, it was one of the nicest meals I’ve had with Hippo all week!!

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Ohgane Korean Restaurant
3915 Broadway
(between 38th St & 40th St)
Oakland, CA 94611
(510) 594-8300
Hours: Mon-Sun 11:00 a.m.-11:00 p.m

After a hard long week of couple trouble, we finally sat down for a well-deserved meal of…

Raven poop?

Well, to be fair, I didn’t insist that Hippo accompany me to actually try raven excrement. I wouldn’t do that. I only forced her to try corn rot. “Raven’s excrement” is just the transliteration of “huitlacoche.” I believe the proper euphemism is “corn fungus.”

Earlier today, I was sitting in on my anthropology of food course listening to a bunch of crap about food politics this, structuralism in meals that, economics of “foodways” this – you know, the usual “let’s not do any real political science, linguistics or economics” nonsense – blah blah blah until one of the teachers asks, “Have any of you tried huitlacoche?”

Intrigued, I finally listened. Wait, Mexicans take the fungus off or molding corn ears and just eat it?! Awesome!

The professor suggested that you can’t find it at “run of the mill” Mexican restaurants, but you can find it at “higher-end” places such as Maya in San Francisco, so I immediately began trying to remember if you need a reservation to get into Dona Tomas (I’ll stay in Oakland, thank you very much).

To my disappointment, both Dona Tomas and Tamarindo weren’t serving it; higher-end, my butt. Luckily, I recalled that I tried a Oaxacan joint way back when…Huarache Azteca! I had previously tried their huarache (sandal-shaped thick tortilla with steak, cheese, etc.), but wasn’t a fan – everything was too dry.

This time, I was prepared. I dragged Hippo over to Fruitvale, nearly killed her crossing the street, sat down, snapped a few pictures of the decor and ordered my huitlacoche quesadilla – only $3.50…what a steal!

And whoah. It had a different, pleasant, almost sour taste to it. If you smelled too carefully, it smelled like…let’s see…what’s a sophisticated way to describe it? Oh, I know. Rotting veggies! Delightful!

My only regret is that I really wanted to try a big chunk of the stuff by itself, like in the form of a cheese block.

The huitlacoche quesadilla at Huarache Azteca

Before I let Hippo tell you how she feels being dragged around by me (and also what else we ate), let me just say two things.

First of all, the key to a man’s heart isn’t his stomach – it’s putting new, weird crap into his stomach until he can’t budge and then shoving your own tummy till you match! And for that, Hippo is my one and only.

Second of all, even if you’re not interested in corn mold, you should take a quick visit to Huarache if only for the following reason. On their mural-covered walls, they have a few things written in English, or written in both Spanish and English. For example, they have a nice little phrase that reads: “La vida es corta – deja tu huella” (Life is short – leave your mark). The only thing left untranslated were two paragraphs on the front wall, above the door. Here’s one of them:

I’ll let you translate that.

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It’s been a tough week for me.  Driving in the Bay Area under the scalding-hot September sun, working in over three gigs, and dancing to my vastus lateralis‘ breaking point  — these things can ferment the wrong type of excitability in a Purple Hippo.  Of course, my dear Blue Elephant takes that literally and takes me along for the ride.

What, pray tell, can be the antidote to bad fermentation (mood)?  Why, good fermentation, of course, especially James Beard Foundation-approved fermentation — namely, huitlacoche.I was intrigued as soon as the idea of such a food was proposed.  This was my comrade in arms — my mental state in the form of corn fungus — made into a delicacy.  I would have never been able to expel my smoldering stress had I not been comforted in the discovery of this dear black-spored friend.  Where else can I find myself so unusually motivated as a human being but within the blooming, cream-and-blackened galls of this (usually) uninvited pest on garden-variety maize?  I mean, even huitlacoche can be good food.  I, in my sorry state as a lost-in-her-thoughts individual, am not such a failure after all.

We shared a “Mexican truffle” quesadilla and agreed that “not enough of the best parts of the fungus” was used in its filling – a shared gastronomic judgment which was, in my opinion, an unspoken milestone of perfection in our relationship as a foodie couple.  To its credit, however, I found the taste of the huitlacoche to be generally unrepulsive, even a bit tantalizing.  It wasn’t pungent or woody-flavored like Belachan (fermented shrimp paste used in Southeast Asian stir-frys and curries) or other similarly fermented flavors – rather, it teases the palate after a few bites, like how one would grow to sense the acridity of Fu Yu (fermented tofu) after eating it with rice porridge.  The smell and look of the black, pasty texture on your plate (reminiscent of something gone wrong after weeks in the fridge) could eventually deter most first-timers though, and I would recommend having huitlacoche made fresh, hot, and under the best circumstances (ie. pick a good restaurant).

We also had the Alambres Especial – a sauteed plate of suadero ham, juicy steak, bell peppers, pineapple, and onions served over thick Aztec-style tortillas and smothered on top with Oaxacan cheese and avocado slices.  I actually quite like the chewy, substantial texture of the thick wheat tortillas and found them flavorful, absorbing much of the oil and juices from the meats and vegetables (this was good for the only first 5 minutes; afterwards, it was more like an old sponge).

The alambre especial - suadero ham, steak, bell peppers, pineapple and onions.

I think food continues to be the redeeming factor in our lives. My only sources of stress now concern the mind-boggling choice of an appropriate digestif and the occasional heartburn one experiences after such a quick-and-heavy meal.  Every time I see and feel the rotund protrusions that are our abdomens, I am reminded of the Oaxacan cheese during our unique soul-lifting culinary adventure.

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Huarache Azteca
3842 International Blvd
Oakland, CA 94601
(510) 533-2395

It’s Saturday night.  Dinner time.  It’s going to be the first entry in our blog.  We settled for an old standard, a favorite comfort food joint on dear ol’ Telegraph Ave.  Just to test the waters for collaborative blogging.  Nice and familiar food.  Can’t go wrong.

But tonight’s different.  I have to start off this blog with my humble two-cents on something so homely and yet magnificent – the Korean-style Fried Chicken.

Before the deluge of oily goodness, we got a trio of small dishes:  white daikon kimchi; jalapeno and celery in a spicy ponzu vinaigrette; and the Koreanized slaw – plain shredded cabbage with addictive Thousand Island dressing.  All three plates were swiftly inhaled into our greedy stomachs.  No surprise there.  The dark, rattan blinds and the loud, irreverently 90s K-pop shaded us and every other table of diners in a cloak of unpretentious, all-out binge-fest, be it for skewers or soju.  We were safe.

Per usual we ordered two different preparations of Korean Fried Chicken – the Gan Jang and the Original Fried.  The Gan Jang is our go-to dish, hands down.  Its light-colored batter pairs beautifully with the honey-infused shoyu marinade, in which the freshly-fried pieces of thigh and leg were tossed right before serving.  Topped with sparse pieces of chopped parsley and almost-caramelized slices of garlic, something magical happens between your first bite and your next chew: you get instantly hooked onto the next piece, and crave for more of that sauce which they wisely used with restraint – the crispiness must only be teased with it, like how a hard-edged rocker may sometimes wear baby-pink cardigan sweaters.  The Original Fried was akin to a pleasurable visit from an old friend:  a darker, more flour-based batter was used, and to be dipped in small nibs of honey mustard.

Korean-style fried chicken evokes strange, unreal memories.  Biting into something flavorful and yet crispy at the same time reminds one of Calbee chips or croquettes, but not quite right; the juicy tenderness of chicken meat that follows right after brings it to a surreal level, as if re-tasting the best braised meat you’ve ever had.  It is at once an eating experience and an act of deliverance from life’s banality, a two-layered addiction that is, for the most part, well worth its costs.

This was a very good place to start our blog, after all.

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I don’t really remember how we happened upon OB – or even if we did so together – but can you believe our luck?

I mean…come on. It’s Korean Fried Chicken right next to Kentucky Fried Chicken in the boonies between Oakland and Berkeley. The owners must have been too cheap to take out the gargantuan pole that used to house some kind of nostalgic diner sign, and too cheap to open up shop on Telegraph’s mini-Koreatown, further down south, and too cheap to keep the damn place regularly! I can’t tell you the number of times the two of us have tried to drop by on a Sunday, or Tuesday, or Friday at 6 p.m. or 1 a.m. or 11 p.m. and have been met with either a closed restaurant or waiters who tell us that the place is “closed.” It MAY be that we just catch it outside of its business hours, but we’re very skeptical.

Best of all, it’s called ORIENTAL Chicken Town. Seriously? That’s almost as good as the time we went to a Korean BBQ joint where the resto sign was a pork with bullet holes in it (watch for that review!).

Anyway, we had our usual tonight – uhh….chicken…and more chicken. Now I might as well come out and say it: I have an unnatural obsession with fried chicken of all sorts, from bar food buffalo wings to soul smothered chicken to backyard BBQ. But Korean twice-fried, super thin-skinned, wait-an-unbelievable-45-minutes-for-it-to-prepare chicken tops them all.

That being said, this place doesn’t offer the real stuff, in my opinion. Not really, anyway. It’s not 99 Chicken in Santa Clara. It’s not Kyo Chon and its ilk in Los Angeles. It’s somewhere in between normal, boring fried chicken and awesome, amazing Korean fried chicken. It comes out in 15 minutes max; the skin is not twice-fried and not nearly thin or crispy enough (hippo may beg to differ, though…); and the pieces are comparatively gigantic.

But, you gotta love it. The ol’ go-to chicken joint. Every couple should have one, and if you’re stuck in Oakland, OB is the way to go. Thick spicy sauce, honey mustard, soy sauce that tastes like honey, garlic, jalapenos, celery soaked in jalapeno juice, bits of pickled “daikon,” thousand island-soaked shredded cabbage. Find all that at your ol’ Colonel!

Plus, if you think this is just more Korean bar food, think again. The chicken here is actually tender and the sauce doesn’t taste like someone gathered eight cans of random crap bought at Koreana and threw it together. I recommend sticking with the soy sauce and garlic chicken…

The soy sauce and garlic chicken (Gan Jang) at OB Oriental Chicken Town.

The skin is better than the others I’ve tasted, and the sauce is oddly sweet without being too overbearing (at least, until the last fourth of your mountain of fried meat, which is inevitable). Unlike at other Korean joints further south, the 8 billion ounce jugs of beer or soju, though available, is secondary.

Something about gorging oneself with fried food with a loved one is so…intimate. To know when your partner is feeling exactly that feeling of absolute disgust – the feeling that one wouldn’t want to touch another bit of oily, fried crap…except for this one last bite…or two… – that’s special.

But don’t worry, the stuff is fried in “100% pure virgin olive oil”!

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Oriental B.B.Q. Chicken Town
6101 Telegraph Ave.
(between 61st St & 62nd St)
Oakland, CA 94609
(510) 595-5338
Hours: Mon-Sun 4:00 p.m.-1:00 a.m.